Hi,
My son is almost one month into swimming learning from a professional swimming coach. He is 9 yrs old. He is good in kicking and can cover 25 meters pool with his kickboard easily without any problem. Currently his coach is teaching him freestyle. He is progressing well but he is stuck at a particular point. He currently uses one arm swinging in water and one arm on the kickboard and breathes fine through side head but he is not going to next step from here on. The shallowest side of the pool is 4.5Ft and his feet do not touch the bottom and he is scared to swimming without kickboard. He can hold my hand and can swim with kicking easily but he still needs someone's hand or some support on his front. His coach tried to encourage him go swimming with his kicks and his arms straightened but hardly covers 10 feet with this and goes down. What can be done here? Should he use hand paddles? Any swimming accessory which could help here?
Kind Regards,
Khabbab
Good morning. A month is a very short amount of time, but it sounds like he's making some progress. Let the coach do his/her work and trust that your son will improve over time with patience and practice. Swimming is a sport you will continue to refine and grow over years.
I concur with 'storms above. It's WAAAaaay early. Just regular and consistant practice...but I wouldn't say anything intense. That is, you want it to remain a 'fun' activity for the kid. Take him (and maybe a friend) to 'open swim' and just let him play...telling him to "swim to get that float" or some other thing to demonstrate to you what he's learning...and at the same time reinforcing his own abilities. And I don't know that accessories like hand paddles are a good idea at this early stage. He's really in a stage of learning coordination, and technique right now. And any coordination activity for a 9 year old is difficult...let alone the coordination required for swimming. Just get him in the water often...and not always in a regimented fashion so that it's fun...and it'll come.
Dan
It took longer than that to learn to walk, give him time to adjust.
Fear is something that must be overcome to learn to swim in kids and adults as well.
Dear Khabbab,
My daughter is afraid of water on her face: she doesn't like water flowing into her face when have a bath. When she was 6 years old, I have to get her used to that by using a shower to wet her hair first. After that, I taught her to hold her breath when the water flowed through her face, then waited for all the water mostly run dry to inhale into her mouth. After getting used to it, I took her to the swimming pool with swimming goggles, practicing breathing exercise like the breaststroke, held her in my hands of course. The next drill, she squated on the bottom of the pool and then stood up. Thus, even though she didn't know how to swim, she knew how to hold her breath while her face went into the water and she could go up to break the surface in order to inhale. Finally, I taught her how to swim.
I think you should combine training for your son to swim and get used to the depth of water.
